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Sandbagging or trapping in FL 5cd

Based on a question I received awhile ago, I thought I'd start a thread on slowplaying/sandbagging in FL five-card draw. If you've ever slowplayed a hand, why did you think it was better than the alternative?

I think two key ingredients are how strong your hand is and who are the likely opponents. Long ago, I had AAA33 UTG at 30-60 and I thought the SB would complete with a lot of one pair hands, so...

Note that breaking the full house is not without risk: if both blinds started with different one pair hands, about 2.7% of the time I'd get beat. On the flip side, by breaking I get paid off by two pairs/trips by the SB.

The obvious candidate hand to limp trap with is quads; however, if you limp instead of raise, you should have some weaker hands to open limp with, so the ones that seem to work out okay are those 12-out or 15-out high straight flush draws with a pair that isn't quite good enough to open raise with; the ideal kind of hand looks like Ks Qs Js Ts Qh. The other type of hand to open limp with are the high 15-out draws KQJT(suited) and QJT9 (suited) without a pair ( although with the last hand, if you held an ace discard it's probably best to just raise ).

With big pat hands like AAAxx and KKKAA, open limping is something I've always tried from UTG or the HIJ at 6-max because at least if the conditions are right, I have the option to break off by drawing a card. I've sometimes open limped with above average full houses, but those are probably my weakest open-limping hands that I pat and it's likely I won't open limp them at all in the future except maybe kings-full.

It turns out that much of the extra gain from open limping is from the SB that could complete with a hand that has virtually little chance of winning, so ideally you want a player in the SB that will complete with a lot of one pair hands and straight draws.

This post has been edited 1 time(s), it was last edited by Karl1977: 11.01.2015 09:05.

Yes, this is an interesting topic for further discussion

When I first started playing, I read somewhere in an article or a post (though can't remember where exactly) something like:
"Slowplaying in 5CD is never correct. Since you often will not get paid off postdraw, with a very good hand, you have to build the pot as much as possible predraw by capping whenever it is correct to do so"

I think a better point of view would be "Slowplaying in 5CD is RARELY correct" which is something different from "NEVER"

Why it can sometimes be a better play than raising imo is that by slowplaying if the circumstances are right (depends on the table, the players, etc.) you can sometimes build a bigger pot for rare very powerful hands than if you open raise and everyone folds. It depends whether you know the players or not, whether they know you (have played with you before) or not, is there a lot of limping or raising going on at the table or not, how aggressive are the other players etc.

But you would definitely need an almost 'unbeatable' hand to slowplay, either quads or a full house AAAXX; in short a hand that has little chance of losing postdraw. Personally I would slowplay only with quads or an AAAXX full house. Of course these hands don't come along very often.

Quads are definitely the best candidate, especially because with a full house, you will stand pat and chances are that after you stood pat, no one will pay you off postdraw. With quads, you would not stand pat but draw one, so you could have a wide range of hands and your chances of getting more bets in the pot postdraw are higher.